Circle Of Useless Knowledge

— I saw a weird looking sign, my husband tells me, on a Chinese restaurant. It had a large “七” – Chinese for 7 – with, underneath, the mention “Sept”.

— Yeah, “sept” is French for “seven”.

— What! (He reacts as if I’ve just proffered the most absurd of facts.) But isn’t sept the abbreviation of septembre? I was sure it was nine!

— Ohhh, yes well we do abbreviate the ninth month sept., but underneath a big Chinese 7, I take it to mean 7. Septembre and sept are quite unrelated, really. (I lie with conviction.)

— Really? I don’t know. September, October, November, and December; they sound like Latin numbers to me.

— Oooooh! You’re so right! The last months of the year are numbered from seven to ten! I hadn’t noticed!

Once again the immigrant teaches the native about her own land. «Teaches» is a euphemism! I’m blinded with this shiny truth!

… And, I can’t explain why.

So I checked. The story begins with the Romans being a military people: their calendar starts when war is launched, and that’s in March. (They fight in sandals, the Romans, so they prefer to wait for the snow to melt before campaigning.) The names of the first four months of the Roman calendar honor gods: in March we make war (Mars), in April we make love (Aphrodite), in May we sow our fields (Maïus), in June we marry (Junon). The following months are called #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, et #10.

So what happens after December? Nothing. The calendar finishes. There’s about fifty days left until the beginning of the next year in March, which don’t count! This time in-between has no name and days are no longer counted, except for the few days before the start of the new year, which are called calends.

Under Julius Ceasar, two extra winter months are added: one named after Janus, the god of doors, and the other named after Februa, the god of death. The sunny month of Quintilis is also renamed in Ceasar’s honor, Julius. Later Augustus Ceasar got Sextilis to be renamed after himself, and not only that, but since he deserved as many days in his month as Julius, a day was removed from the end of the calendar year in February and appended to August.

So far, September is still month number seven. It’s only with the official adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1582 (this calendar removes 3 leap days per 4 centuries, for better precision) that European citizens are all encouraged to shift their celebrations of the pagan new year, around the spring equinox in March, to the fiscal and political new year day of January 1st. Thus, the 2 month shift in the Latin numbering of the months.

To make fun of the few ignorant poor souls naïve enough to keep thinking New Year’s is at the spring equinox and wondering why they haven’t been invited to any parties this year, people started to create empty gift packages and fake invitations to non-existent parties, for the April Fools.

The jacks are:

• ♥ Lahire
• ♣ Lancelot
• ♦ Hector
• ♠ Ogier

The queens:

• ♥ Judith
• ♣ Argine
• ♦ Rachel
• ♠ Pallas

And the kings:

• ♥ Charles
• ♣ Alexander
• ♦ Jules
• ♠ David

Charles and Pallas. Details on Wikipedia

Oliver Sacks says so (at 13:50): “There is another part of the brain, which is especially activated when one sees cartoons. It’s activated when one recognizes cartoons, when one draws cartoons, and when one hallucinates them. It’s very interesting that that should be specific.”

While reading some olympic news spiced up with useless knowledge à la Jean Dion, I found this rather incredible fact:

[...] the American Johnny Spillane, in nordic combined —cross-country ski plus ski jump — has a damn holy fear of… travel by airplane. «I hate it», said he, «I just sit there and suffer. From the time the wheels come up to the time they go down, I’m not having any fun. » And nevertheless, he likes flying with no aircraft.

The fear of flying also has the names erophobia, aviatophobia, aviophobia ou pteromechanophobia. Here is a list of words ending in phobia. I haven’t found one that stands for fear of overly pretentious pseudo-scientific words ending in phobia, but I like Aibohphobia – fear of palindromes.

Aside from Johnny Spillane, the amazing «Non-Flying Dutchman», Dennis Bergcamp, is known for his fear of flying. The football player, who’s caliber would be high enough to scare an acrophobic, suffered from aviopoibia to the point he refused to take part in any match he couldn’t get to without flying. European distances being somewhat more reasonable than, say, a Montreal-Vancouver drive, he could represent Holland at the 1994 and 1998 World Cups. However, he had to desert his team, otherwise known as «The Flying Dutchmen», for the 2002 Mundial, held in Japan and Korea. He could have hitched a ship ride with fellow countryman and captain of the Flying Dutchman, Barend Fokke, had the latter not vanished mysteriously towards the end of the 17th century…

Legend has it Captain Barend Fokke and his crew were banned to err in between worlds indefinitely for a pact they had made with the demon. In effect, the men and their ship could sail between Holland and Java in only three month and four days, which clearly hints at something fishy going on.

Moreover, Fokke was, apparently, extremely ugly, which added to the credibility of an infernal pact^[2].

The Dutch vessel then vanished without a trace, and many phantom ship apparitions, from South Africa to the North Sea, were subsequently attributed to Fokke, the probable captain of the Flying Dutchman. Later though, Flying Dutchman viewership crashed low as martian spacecraft sightings increased…

We know today that phantom ships exist. They are an optical illusion caused by the refraction of light near the horizon in atypical temperature conditions. The phenomenon is called Fata Morgana, and causes objects which are behind the horizon line to appear to float slightly above the horizon, deformed. Fata Morgana is the name given to Morgan le Fay of the arthurian legend in the Italian translation, but I digress…

Flying Dutchman par George Grie

image shamelessly stolen from the BBC

Walter Fredrick “Fred” Morrison: inventor of the Frisbee, died on Feb. 9th at age 90. Frisbees were initially baptised Whirlo-Way, then Flyin-Saucer, and Pluto Platter, before becoming Frisbees. Let us lift a cake pan in his honor; Cheers, mister Morrisson!

les Joies de la maternité - poil au nez - par Elise Gravel et Caroline Allard ˆˆˆ en vente ici ˆˆˆ

I have the tiniest of little concerns about my little one’s “Whyyyyy?” phase. For one, at three months old already he’s so curious that he forces his eyes open, in order not to miss anything, even while in REM phase of sleep (creeeepy). Secondly, and most of all, because his mom never actually graduated from her own “Whyyyy?” phase.

If my mother had replied other things than “Because.”, it might have helped. But she didn’t have pads and pods in contact with wikipedia at all times. I now finally have the means to quench the many whys (whies?) of my childhood.

One of the questions I exasperated grown ups with a a child is why do letters have the shape the do. Why, instead of a triangle with two legs, wouldn’t we draw stars for ‘A’s. I wanted to do stars. All this time, unbeknownst to me, I’ve been drawing cattle.

Yes. Oxen.

The Lebanese decided this. You may recall a character in Astérix called Ekonomikrisis, a Phoenician? Well, his ancestor, Overdraftnotis, on a sunny mediterranean morning a thousand years before Jesus would be born, decided to inventory the things his fleet swayed on the sea from Byblos to Tripoli. He had Chineese tea, Greek squid, Babylonian Baklava, Gaul magic potion, Berber clementines,… and he thought “Holy Orisis, there are limits to drawing everything! And none of my clients draw the same way, too! I’m NOT gonna learn a thousand of pictograms for each port I cast anchor in, especially since we, the phoenicians, have had a phonetic alphabet for, like, a thousand years: everyone should just use phoenician and that’s it that’s all.” And actually, from then on, everyone did.

Surprisingly, the idea of a phonetic writing system, everyone had had it before, and they all thought it was a bad idea. The Chinese and the Egyptians, for instance, had characters in their writing that were purely phonetic, but the scribes and academia of the period percieved with great disdain a system so simple that any blogger on maternity leave could use it to write such futilites. The Phoenicians, however, were not above anything as long as they could bargain a better deal, hence, their simple writing spread in great vogue around the Mediterranean. Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew and Arabic all descend from Phoenician. Soon even those barbaric Etruscans had their version, adapted to the sounds of their own tongue. It helped them document the foundation of Rome, the evil plans of world domination, and the recipe for linguine al vongole.

The shape of our Roman letters, then, comes from a prototype of Phoenician that was in use already as far back as 4000 years ago, called proto-siniatic and later proto-canaanite. And what they are is very simple; the art director of the project simply told it’s stone engraving team “I need to represent the sound ‘Aaaa’. What starts with A? Oxen of course! (He called those ʾalp and his great-grand-children would say ʼāleph. And B is for house. (bēth).”

Doesn’t it remind you of anything? The letters are Phoenician alphabet blocks! The ones with an A on a face and an apple on another, a blue B and a yellow beach ball, ect… Except there’s no letter. The picture is the letter.

So of course, now you want to know the pictures in your name. I knew it. Your quests are so impossibly futile!

Here you go:

alphabet romain »»»	étrusque »»»	phénicien »»»	protocananéen »»»	égyptien »»»	sens original
A					ox ʼāleph
B					house, cottage bēth
C					either camel or throwstick gīmel
D					fish or door dāleth
E					hurray! (or maybe window) hē
F					F is a derivative of wāw like V, so hook or mace
G					G is a variant of the latin C, so camel or throwstick
H					wall, fence ḥēth
I					arm and hand yōdh
J					J is a variant of I, so arm and hand
K					hand (palm) kaph
L					goad (a stick to lead cattle) lāmedh
M					water mēm
N					serpent nun
O					eye ʼayin
P					maybe mouth, or maybe curve, bend pē
Q					might be monkey, or the eye of a needle (I vote for monkey) qōph
R					head rēš
S					tooth, or sun (the Uraeus) šin
T					mark, signature tāw
U					a variant of V, so hook or mace
V					hook, or mace wāw
W					W est littéralement un double V, donc 2 crochets ou 2 gourdins
X					possibly fish, or pillar sāmekh
Y					Y is borrowed to the Greeks (upsilon), which is also derived from phoenician wāw: hook or mace
Z					weapon, or maybe handcuffs zayin

Water, ox, head, arm and hand, hurray! My satisfaction is complete.